Manufacture of Kefalograviera cheese with less sodium by partial replacement of NaCl with KCl

Kefalograviera cheeses (five trials) of different sodium content were made from split lots of curd by varying the salting processes, i.e. brine—and dry—salting with NaCl (control) or a mixture of NaCl/KCl (3:1 or 1:1, w/w basis). The results indicated that up to 50% reduction of sodium content in Kefalograviera cheese is feasible, with partial replacement of NaCl by KCl, without an adverse effect on its quality. It was also found that the cheeses made with the mixtures of NaCl/KCl did not exhibit any significant (p>0.05) difference in compositional (moisture, fat, protein, salt), physico-chemical (pH, aw), or textural (force and compression to fracture, hardness, cohesiveness, springiness, gumminess, chewiness) properties in comparison with the control cheese. Kefalograviera cheese of highly acceptable quality, which did not differ (p>0.05) in sensory characteristics (appearance, body and texture, flavour, total score) from the control cheese, can be produced using a mixture of NaCl and KCl instead of NaCl alone. The Na:K ratio (molecular basis) decreased from 35.3 in the control cheese to 4.2 and 1.4 in the cheeses salted with 3:1 or 1:1 mixture of NaCl/KCl, respectively. The use of the 1:1 NaCl/KCl mixture in the salting of Kefalograviera cheese effectively brought its Na:K ratio close to the desired 1.0, while also greatly reducing the sodium content by about 50%.